Room No. 10 (35 page)

One of the swings moved in the breeze as they passed, just one, as though an invisible child had started swinging there, too.

Paula sat in that swing, Winter thought.

“The boys are in their places,” Halders said.

Winter saw the marked car outside the front door.

“They haven’t called, so it’s probably okay,” Halders continued.

Winter looked up. He saw the windows that belonged to the Ney family’s apartment. There were three windows; he remembered that there were three windows that looked out onto the courtyard. There had been three people in that family. He suddenly saw a face in the dark middle window. The face was like a white shadow.

W
hat the hell is this all about?” Mario Ney was already out in the stairwell as Winter and Halders were on their way up. Winter could see the two police officers from Frölunda flanking Ney like bodyguards in uniform. “What’s going on?”

“Can we go in?” Winter said.

Ney turned around abruptly, as though to verify the location of the door, that he was standing outside his own home.

“It’s Elisabeth? Something’s happened to her? Where is she?”

“Mario . . .”

Winter extended his hand, but Ney was already on his way back over the threshold, as though he understood that it was in there that he would get his answers.

“Can we go now?” one of the police officers asked.

“Thanks,” Winter said.

“What did he say when you got here?” Halders asked.

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Nothing?”

“We just came up here. He opened the door and stared at us and then he went back into the apartment again.”

“And then you got here,” said the other officer. “But he was calm.”

“He was acting quite differently just now,” Halders said.

“He saw us through the window,” Winter said. “He recognized me.”

“So you triggered the reaction?”

“He probably feels that he has quite a bit to blame me for.”

“He doesn’t know the half of it yet,” said Halders.

Winter didn’t answer. They were on their way into the hall. He could hear his colleagues’ footsteps as they clomped down the stairs like elephants in uniform. If none of the neighbors had noticed their visit yet, they would now.

Winter saw Ney’s back. The man was standing at the window, as if he was waiting until he could see the uniforms down in the courtyard. He turned around. He looked calmer now. It was as though he knew.

“Can we sit down?” Winter said.

“Just say what you have to say.”

“We found Elisabeth. She’s dead.”

First the good news, Winter thought. We found her. Then the bad. Ney didn’t seem to react at first. He looked like he was still waiting to hear Winter’s news. He looked from Halders to Winter, back and forth, as if one of them was going to say something.

“Mario . . .”

“How?”

Just that. How. Ney was still standing at the window. It was impossible to see the expression on his face; the light from the window was shining on his back. Winter could see the police car start up beyond the playground, make a U-turn in the parking lot, drive slowly out onto the thoroughfare toward Frölunda. He wished he were sitting in it. Then he could have avoided describing how. He couldn’t do that now, wasn’t allowed to do that.

“Where?”

Two questions now. The second question suddenly made it easier to answer the first one.

“Odin,” Winter said. “Hotel Odin. She ha—”

“What was she doing there?” Ney interrupted. “Where is it?”

“Kungsgatan. But—”

“Another hotel! What the hell is going on?”

Winter heard the increase of sharpness in Ney’s voice. He still couldn’t see the man’s face clearly. It was completely necessary to see it.

“Sit down, Mario.”

“I ca—”

“Sit down!”

It was as though Ney understood. He took a few quick steps forward and sat down in the nearest easy chair. Winter sat on the sofa across from him, next to Halders, who had sat down right away.

“We still don’t know how,” Winter said.

Ney placed his hands over his face. He bent forward. Winter and Halders could see the bald patch on the top of his head.

He dropped his hands and looked up.

“But . . . dead?”

Winter nodded.

“What had she . . . done? What has she done? What happened? How did she die?”

“She was murdered,” Winter said.

“When?”

“Sorry?” said Halders.

“When did it happen? Did it happen just now? Today? Did it happen yesterday?” Ney leaned forward. Winter could see the taut skin of his face, the red eyes, the moving hands. “When did it happen?”

“We don’t really know yet,” said Winter.

“Don’t know? Don’t know?” Ney was on his way up again. “What
do
you know? You don’t know a damn thing!”

“Is there anything we should know?” Winter asked. “Something that you know?”

“What?” Ney sat down again, or fell down, into the easy chair. “What? What?”

His eyes were moving back and forth now, from Winter to Halders. First his daughter and then his wife, Winter thought. He has the right to ask how, and where, and what. Maybe he’s right. But we have to ask questions, too.

“I think you understand that we have to ask you what you’ve been doing for the last twenty-four hours,” Winter said.

“What? Me? What does it matter what I’ve been doing?”

He stood up.

“Other people should be answering that question. Shouldn’t they?”

“Like who?” Winter asked.

Ney didn’t answer. He looked like he was still waiting for an answer from Winter.

•   •   •

Halders drove back through the tunnel. The traffic had increased; headlights illuminated walls that looked better in darkness.

Mario Ney had refused help. “We’ll send over someone for you to talk to,” Winter had said. “If you want to stay here.”

“I want to be alone,” Ney had said.

It was a difficult situation. They could take him in for six hours, maybe six more if he were under suspicion for anything. Under suspicion, the lowest degree. Is he? Winter thought of the fleck of blood inside the knot of the rope that had been tightened around Paula’s neck. His daughter’s neck. The drop of blood was hers. And there was nothing else to compare it with. No one else. Winter hoped that something would come of the new analyses at SKL. A drop of saliva on the rope that had been wrapped around Elisabeth’s neck. Soon they would know. And he would ask Mario politely about a DNA test. A simple test, a swab along the inside of the cheek, across the gums. Something to compare to.

But perhaps Mario needed someone to talk to, to protect him from himself.

“I really want to be alone,” he had repeated.

“Don’t you have someone you can talk to?” Halders asked. “A friend or a relative.”

Ney had shaken his head.

Halders drove out of the tunnel. The October afternoon was slowly sinking into evening. The streetlights had already come on.

“He shouldn’t be left alone,” Halders said.

“I know.”

“Are you going to send someone?”

“Let me think for a minute.”

Halders spun through the roundabout and turned onto the highway. The river became visible. A merchant vessel was gliding into the harbor. Winter thought he could see people on the deck, despite the long distance.

“Your minute is up,” said Halders.

“There was something about his reaction that made me react,” said Winter.

“Didn’t he express enough sadness?” Halders turned toward Winter. “Or too much?”

“What did you think?”

“I’ve seen too many reactions like that,” Halders said. “I can’t decide until I see him again.”

“No.”

“Sadness shows up in a thousand different ways. Reactions, delayed reactions. Shock. You know that.”

Winter nodded.

“Soon he’ll call with all the questions he wants to ask,” Halders said.

“We have enough already,” Winter said, changing position in his seat. His knee had been rubbing against the dashboard. “A mother and a daughter murdered.”

“At least there’s a connection there,” said Halders.

“Is that some kind of gallows humor?” Winter said.

“No.”

They passed the Stena terminal. The lines of cars to the ferry were long. The exhaust fumes rose like smoke from the semi trucks.

“We’ve tried looking back in Paula’s life,” Winter said after a little while. “And we haven’t gotten very far. But Paula’s past probably isn’t enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her mother, Elisabeth. We have to trace her life backward, too.”

Halders mumbled something Winter couldn’t hear.

“What did you say?”

“Soon we’ll be moving more backward than forward in this case. These cases.”

“Is it the first time?” Winter said.

Halders didn’t answer.

“The whole family’s past,” Winter said. “There’s something we’re not getting at there. A big secret.”

Halders nodded.

“A big secret,” Winter repeated.

“Maybe not just one,” said Halders.

•   •   •

Winter didn’t need to take out the white hand to look at it. He could see it already. It wasn’t like it was for Ringmar; it wasn’t waving at him. It was closed, clenched. Something he couldn’t reach. Like the remains of a statue.

He was sitting at home with the whiskey in his glass. Statue. The remains of a statue. What do we have here? We have a hand from a body. It’s the opposite. What do you see when you look at an ancient statue? A body, a torso. No head. No hands. The opposite now. Hand. No torso. Something is wrong.

The middle finger on Elisabeth Ney’s right hand had been painted white. The right middle finger. There hadn’t been any cans of paint in the white storage room.

Just one white finger. Not a whole hand.

Winter looked at the clock. There was someone at Ney’s house now. Maybe he wouldn’t make it through the night. Up to the emergency room. Maybe the same bay.

Winter drank his Glenfarclas. There was a scent of whiskey around him. It was a good scent. It stood for the goodness in the world. In life, too. The word “whiskey” came from the Gaelic usquebaugh. The water of life. There had still been moisture on the floor in the storeroom where they found Elisabeth Ney. The cleaning rooms had to be cleaned, too. The maid had been there shortly before the murder. Oh God, he must have waited. With her? How could the timing work
out like that? Winter looked at the clock again, almost midnight. The girls were sleeping. Elsa had woken herself up with her own snoring an hour ago. The polyps. She would have an operation soon, but he pushed that thought away. It was easier for Angela. She was a doctor, and she knew everything that could go wrong but didn’t say a word about it; maybe she didn’t even think about it. There must be something compulsive about doctors: Nothing happens to anyone, especially not those in one’s own family. Elsa would be okay by the time they were on the plane to Málaga. Would he be okay? Would he be there?

“Aren’t you coming to bed, Erik?”

He lifted his gaze from the whiskey glass. The liquor was a beautiful color when the flame of the candle shone right through the glass.

“Come and sit down,” he answered, making room on the couch.

She yawned over by the door.

“I’m just going to get a glass of water.”

He heard the tap out in the kitchen. He heard a car go by down on Vasaplatsen, and the hoarse protests from a gang of jackdaws that were breeding in the maples. Soon the last streetcar would clatter by and people would go to rest.

Angela came back with the glass in hand.

“Come here,” he said, opening his arms.

“It smells like a distillery in here,” she said.

“Yes, isn’t it lovely?”

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”

“I’m working now.”

She cuddled up against him. Winter put down his glass and pulled her even closer.

“Are you cold?”

“Not anymore.”

“You smell like sleep,” he said.

“What does that smell like?”

“Innocent,” he answered.

“Yes, I’m innocent.”

“I know you are, Angela.”

“Innocent until proven guilty.”

“You don’t need any proof here.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And you don’t need this, either,” he said, and he unbuttoned the top button of her nightgown, and then the other buttons.

•   •   •

He dreamed about two children swinging, each on their own swing, in perfect symmetry. He was standing alongside. There was no stand for the swings; they were flying free in the air, there didn’t seem to be any law of gravity. This is a lawless land, he thought. The children laughed. He couldn’t see their faces. They laughed again. He woke up. He fought it; it was an involuntary awakening. One of the children had said something to him just before he left them. He wanted to go back to hear clearly what he hadn’t understood. Now he didn’t remember.

Winter placed his feet on the floor. The wood was soft and warm. Angela moved in the bed behind him and mumbled something. Maybe she was dreaming. He walked across the floor and into the living room and sat down on the sofa. It was dark and quiet out there, the hour of the wolf. November first tomorrow. Scandinavia was entering the hour of the wolf that would last until next year. The merciful snow usually blew past this city to fall farther inland. The gray winter was left behind. Nothing ought to be able to be hidden in it. There was nothing to use as cover. And yet, so much was hidden. Everything, more or less. There won’t be much more sleep tonight. There won’t be much more sleep until this is over. When will it be over? Angela had asked, just before she fell asleep. But it wasn’t a question. They were planning for the immediate future, and she didn’t say anything because he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say that he might come later. That he would leave the winter, green, white, gray, but that he would leave it later
because he had something he had to do first. Someone he had to meet.

Suddenly Lilly began to scream. Another dream in the night, a nasty one. It had happened a few times. He wondered what she was dreaming. What was there that was nasty in her life, or her dream life? What was it that threatened such a small person? What was it that was allowed to threaten someone so little?